Two discs, the second one contains Who Has Nine?, Gravity Worship, and It Can't Be True Can It?

All tracks that can be found elsewhere (Coatings or Life In The Manscape CD single), sure, but - that's a lovely looking little set. I thought the cardboard-sleeve Manscape was awfully nice, but that takes the cake.

There's also the Toshiba/EMI Japan releases of the first three albums that tacked (all? most?) of the Behind The Curtain tracks onto the end of each separate album. I think those are long since out of print, as is Behind The Curtain. With those you get the album, the singles and b-sides that EMI tacked onto the first round of CD reissues, plus the demos. Bundles of material on each disc. PinkFlag's notes for their own reissues appear to discourage meddling with the original album by tacking things on at the end (can't say that I blame them), but wow - that's a lot of material spread over three discs.

Unfortunately, from what I remember from having seen the Chairs Missing version, they did a crap job reproducing the cover art. But I suppose that isn't really the point on a hunt like this...

I have the Pink Flag Japanese edition, actually. It has Pink Flag, dot Dash, Options R, and the Roxy tracks and first session from Behind the Curtian. And yes, the packaging is a hash. (I think it was £5 or so on Ebay - has a Tower Records sticker on it and reeks of hash)

I'm definatley on the lookout for that Manscape - its fantastic packaging. Who knows, I might even find a Everybody Loves A History there (we can hope!), or an Eardrum Buzz shirt!

BTW Ari, I enjoy hearing all the reissue bonus tracks that Robert Smith is putting out with the early catalogue (up to Disintegration atm). I hear em once or twice then they go on the shelf. The gem of Cure releases is still the 4 cd set Join the Dots.

As for Japan, I hear Bruce Gilbert's solo stuff is more prevelant there on cd than it is in the states. At least from what I have seen.

Paul, yeah, but this time there's a 'Real' gem in the pkg., ala Live at wembley arena,(a.k.a 'Entreat') somewhat extended from the original too.I gotta guess there's gotta be 'something' in the Wire bins that's never seen the light of day.as for 'join the dots', great compilation.

I'd love to see Wire do that, actually, considering how drastically many of their songs evolved from demo to live to studio. The Chairs Missing-era demos of "Indirect Inquiries" and "French Film Blurred", for example, or the Oxford '85 versions of "Kidney Bingos" and "Over Theirs", are a quite radical comparison. Seeing such material potentially cleaned up and released, if only for historical reasons, would be so very, very great.

J.H.M. I totally agree. Because of sequencing in the studio live tracks are often vastly different from the album versions and definately evolve over time which I think is great. I appreciate the releases like 'Third Day' 'Twelve Times You' 'Brochure' etc... that show the evolution of things. It's about time for another round of those me thinks!

Ari, I have the original Entreat on vinyl so I was thrilled to get the expanded set with the new remaster :)

I think a proper live album from the 1980s is one of the big holes in the Wire catalouge. There must have been some fully recorded concerts? Couldn't we have some more Pink Flag Archive Research and a release along the same lines of Live At The Roxy/Live At CBGBs?